Science lays before us the morphogenetic process of this cultural development in all its detailed fullness and necessity, and at the same time shows it to be something that has already sunk into the mind as a moment of its being and become a possession of mind. The goal to be reached is the mind's insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary; and again we must halt at every stage, for each is itself a complete individual form, and is fully and finally considered only so far as its determinate character is taken and dealt with as a rounded and concrete whole, or only so far as the whole is looked at in the light of the special and pecuhar character which this determination gives it. Because the substance of individual mind, nay, more, because the universal mind at work in the world (Weltgeist), has had the patience to go through these forms in the long stretch of time's extent, and to take upon itself the 28 Phenomenology of Mind prodigious labour of the world's history, where it bodied forth in each form the entire content of itself, which each is capable of grasping; and because by nothing less could that all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is — for that reason, the individual mind, in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains. All the same, its task has meanwhile been made much hghter, because this has historically been imphcitly {an sicli) accomphshed, the content is one where reality has already given place to spiritual possi- bihties, where immediacy has been overcome and brought under the control of reflection, the various forms and shapes have been already reduced to their intellectual abbreviations, to determinations of thought (GedanJcenbestinimung) pure and simple. Being now a thought, the content is the possession of the substance of mind; existence has no more to be changed into the form of what is inherent and impKcit (Ansichseins), but only the imphcit — no longer merely something primi- tive, nor lying hidden within existence, but already present as a recollection — into the form of what is exphcit, of what is objective to self [Filrsichseins).
We have to state more exactly the way this is done. At the point at which we here take up this movement, we are spared, in connection with the whole, the process of cancelhng and transcending the stage of mere existence. This process has already taken place. "What is still to be done and needs a higher kind of transfor::iation, is to transcend the forms as ideally presented and made familiar to our minds. By that previous negative process,: existence, having been withdrawn into the mind's sub-~ stance, is, in the first instance, transferred to the life- Preface 29 of self only in an immediate way. The possession tlie self has thereby acquired, has still the same char- acter of imcomprehended immediacy, of passive in- difference, which existence itself had; existence has in this way merely passed into the form of an ideal presentation. At the same time, by so doing, it is something famihar to us, something " well-known," something which the existent mind has finished and done with, and hence takes no more to do with and no further interest in. While the activity that is done with the existent is itself merely the process of the particular mind, of mind which is not compre- hending itself, on the other hand, hnowledge is directed against this ideal presentation which has hereby arisen, against this " being-familiar " and " well-known "; it is an action of universal mind, the concern of tliouglit. What we are " famihar with " is not intelhgently known, just for the reason that it is " familiar." When engaged in the process of knowing, it is the commonest form of self-deception, and a deception of other people as well, to assume something to be famihar, and give assent to it on that very account. Knowledge of that sort, with all its talk, never gets from the spot, but has no idea that this is the case. Subject and object, and so on, God, nature, imderstanding, sensibility, etc., are uncritically presupposed as familiar and something significant, and become fixed points from which to start and to which to return. The process of knowing flits between these secure points, and in consequence goes on merely along the surface. Apprehending and demon- strating consist similarly in seeing whether every one finds what is said corresponding to his idea too, whether it is familiar and seems to him so and so or not, 30 Phenomenology of Mind Analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, did anyhow consist in notMng else ttan doing away with its character of familiarity. To break up an idea into its ultimate elements means returning upon its moments, which at least do not have the form of the idea as picked up, but are the imjnediate property of the self. Doubt- less this analysis only arrives at thoughts which are themselves known elements, fixed inert determinations. But what is thus broken up into parts, this imreal entity, is itself an essential moment; for just because the concrete fact is self-divided, and turns into unxeahty, it is something self-moving, self-active. The action of separating the elements is the exercise of the force of Understanding, the most astonishing and greatest of all powers, or rather the absolute power. The circle, which is self-enclosed and at rest, and, being a substance, holds its own moments, is an immediate condition, the immediate, continuous relation of ele- ments with their unity, and hence arouses no sense of wonderment. But that an accident as such, when cut loose from its containing circmnference, — that what is bound and held by something else and actual only by being connected with it, — should get an existence all its own, gain freedom and independence on its own account — this is the portentous power of the negative; it is the energy of thought, of pure ego. Death, as we may call that unreality, is the most terrible thing, and to keep and hold fast what is dead demands the greatest force of all. Beauty, powerless and helpless, hates understanding, because the latter exacts from it what it cannot perform.* But the Ufe of mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; * This is directed against Novalis and the cult of beauty.
Preface 31 it endures its death and in death maintaitis its being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself in utter desolation. It is this mighty power, not by being a positive which turns away from the negative, as when we say of anything it is nothing or it is false, and, being then done with it, pass off to something else; on the contrary, mind is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and dwelhng with it. This dwelling beside it is the magic power that converts the negative into being. That power is just what we spoke of above as subject, which by giving determinate- ness a place in its substance, cancels abstract immediacy, i.e. immediacy which merely is, and, by so doing, be- comes the true substance, becomes being or immediacy that does not have mediation outside it, but is this mediation itself.
This process of making what is objectively presented a possession of pm:e self-consciousness, of raising it to the level of universahty in general, is merely one aspect of mental development; spiritual evolution is not yet completed. The manner of study in ancient times is distinct from that of the modern world, in that the former consisted in the cultivation and perfecting of the natural mind. Testing hfe carefully at all points, philosophising about everything it came across, the former created an experience permeated through and through by universals. In modern times, however, an individual finds the abstract form ready made. In straining to grasp it and make it his own, he rather strives to bring forward the inner meaning alone, without any process of mediation; the production of the universal is abridged, instead of the universal arising out of the manifold detail of concrete existence.
32 Phenomenology of Mind 'Hence nowadays the task before us consists not so mucli in getting the individual clear of the level of sensuous immediacy, and making him a substance that thinks and is grasped in terms of thought, but rather the very opposite: it consists in actuahsing the uni- versal, and giving it spiritual vitality, by the process of breaking down and superseding fixed and determinate thoughts. But it is much more difficult to make fixed and definite thoughts fuse with one another and form a continuous whole than to bring sensuous existence into this state. The reason hes in what was said before. Thought determinations get their substance and the ele- ment of their existence from the ego, the power of the negative, or piire reality; while determinations of sense find this in impotent abstract immediacy, in mere being as such. Thoughts become fluent and interfuse, when thinking pure and simple, this inner immediacy, knows itself as a moment, when pure certainty of self abstracts from itself. It does not " abstract " in the sense of getting away from itself and setting itself on one side, but of surrendering the fixed quaUty of its self-affirmation, and giving up both the fixity of the purely concrete — vifhich is the ego as contrasted with the variety of its content — and the fixity of all those distinctions [the various thought-functions, principles, etc.] which are present in the element of pure thought and share that absoluteness of the ego. In virtue of this process pure thoughts become notions and con- ceptions, and are then what they are in truth, self- moving functions, circles, are what their substance consists in, are spiritual entities.
This movement of the spiritual entities constitutes the nature of scientific procedure in general. Looked Preface 33 at as the concatenation of their content, this movement is the necessitated development and expansion of that content into an organic systematic whole. By this movement, too, the road, which leads to the notion of knowledge, becomes itself hkewise a necessary and complete evolving process (Werden). This preparatory stage thus ceases to consist of casual philosophical reflections, referring to objects here and there, to pro- cesses and thoughts of the undeveloped mind as chance may direct; and it does not try to estabhsh the truth by miscellaneous ratiocinations, inferences, and con- sequences drawn from circimiscribed thoughts. The road to science, by the very movement of the notion itself, will compass the entire objective world of con- scious hfe in its rational necessity.
Further, a systematic exposition like this constitutes the first part of science,* because the positive existence of mind, qua primary and ultimate, is nothing but the immediate aspect of mind, the beginning; the begin- ning, but not yet its return to itself. The character- istic feature distinguishing this part of science [Pheno- menology] from the others is the element of positive immediate existence. The mention of this distinction leads us to discuss certain established ideas that usually come to notice in this connection.
The mind's immediate existence, conscious life, has two aspects — cognition and objectivity which is op- posed to or negative of the subjective function of knowing. Since it is in the medium of consciousness that mind is developed and brings out its various moments, this opposition between the factors of con- scious hfe is found at each stage in the evolution of mind, 34 Phenomenology of Mind and all the various moments appear as modes or forms {Gestalten) of consciousness. The scientific statement of the course of this development is a science of the experience through which consciousness passes; the substance and its process are considered as the object of consciousness. Consciousness knows and compre- hends nothing but what falls within its experience; for what is found in experience is merely spiritual sub- stance, and, moreover, object of its self. Mind, how- ever, becomes object, for it consists in the process of becoming an other to itself, i.e. an object for its ov.rn self, and in transcending this otherness. And experience is called this very process by which the element that is immediate, unexperienced, i.e. abstract — whether it be in the form of sense or of a bare thought — externalises itself, and then comes back to itself from this state of estrangement, and by so doing is at length set forth in its concrete nature and real truth, and becomes too a possession of consciousness.
The dissimilarity which obtains in consciousness between the ego and the substance constituting its object, is their inner distinction, the factor of nega- tivity in general. We may regard it as the defect of both opposites, but it is their very soul, their moving spirit. It was on this accoimt that certain thinkers long ago took the void to be the principle of movement, when they conceived the moving prin- ciple to be the negative element, though they had not as yet thought of it as self. While this negative factor appears in the first instance as a dissimilarity, as an inequality, between ego and object, it is just as much the inequality of the substance with itself. What seems to take place outside it, to be an activity directed Preface 35 Preface 35 against it, is its own doing, its own activity; and substance shows that it is in reahty subject. When it has brought out this completely, mind has made its existence adequate to and one with its essential nature. Mind is object to itself just as it is, and the abstract element of immediacy, of the separation between l-mowing and the truth, is overcome. Being is entirely mediated; it is a substantial content, that is hkewise directly in the possession of the ego, has the character of self, is notion. With the attainment of this the Phenomenology of Mind concludes. What mind pre- pares for itself by the argument of the Phenomenology is the element of true knowledge. In this element the moments of mind are now set out in the form of thought pure and simple, which knows its object to be itself. They no longer involve the opposition between being and knowing; they remain within the imdivided sim- plicity of the knowing function; they are the truth in the form of truth, and their diversity is merely diversity of the content of truth. The process by which they are developed into an organically connected whole is Logic and Speculative Philosophy.
Now, because the systematic statement of the mind's experience embraces merely its ways of appearing, it may well seem that the advance from that to the science of ultimate truth in the form of truth is merely negative; and we might readily be content to dis- pense with the negative process as something altogether false, and might ask to be taken straight to the truth at once: why meddle with what is false at all? The point formerly raised, that we should have begun with science at once, may be answered here by considering the character of negativity in general regarded as 36 Phenomenology of Mind something false. The usual ideas on this subject particularly obstruct the approach to the truth. The consideration of this point will give us an opportunity to speak about mathematical knowledge, which the unphilosophical mind looks upon as the ideal Avhicli philosophy ought to try to attain, but has so far striven in vain to reach.
Truth and falsehood as commonly understood belong to those sharply defined ideas which claim a completely fixed nature of their own, one standing in sohd isolation on this side, the other on that, without any community between them. Against that view it must be pointed out, that truth is not like stamped coin* that is issued ready from the mint and so can be taken up and used. Nor, again, is there something false, any more than there is something evil. Evil and falsehood are indeed not so bad as the devil, for in the form of the devil they get the length of being particular subjects; qua false and evil they are merely universals, though they have a nature of their own with reference to one another. Falsity (that is what we are dealing with here) would be otlierness, the negative aspect of the substance, which [substance], qua content of knowledge, is truth. But the substance is itself essentially the negative element, partly as involving distinction and determina- tion of content, partly as being a process of distin- guishing pure and simple, i.e. as being self and know- ledge in general. Doubtless we can know in a way that is false. To know something falsely means that know- ledge is not adequate to, is not on equal terms with, its substance. Yet this very dissimilarity is the process of distinction in general, the essential moment in know- * C'p. Lessing, Nathan der Weise, IV. 6.
Prefdae 37 ing. It is, in fact, out of this active distinction that its harmonious unity arises, and this identity, when arrived at, is truth. But it is not truth in a sense which would involve the rejection of the discordance, the diversity, hke dross from pure metal; nor, again, does truth remain detached from diversity, hke a finished article from the instrument that shapes it. Difference itself continues to be an immediate element within truth as such, in the form of the principle of negation, in the form of the activity of Self. All the same, we cannot for that reason say that falsehood is a moment or forms even a constituent part of truth. That " in every case of falsity there is something true " is an ex- pression in which they are taken to be like oil and water, which do not mix and are merely united externally. Just in the interest of their real meaning, precisely because we want to designate the aspect or moment of complete otherness, the terms true and false must no longer be used where their otherness has been can- celled and superseded. Just as the expressions " unity of subject and object," of " finite and infinite," of " being and thought," etc., are absurd if subject and object, etc., are taken to mean what they are outside their unity, and are thus in that miity not meant to be what its very expression conveys. In the same way falsehood is not, qua false, any longer a moment of truth.
Dogmatism as a way of thinking, whether in ordinary knowledge or in the study of philosophy, is nothing else but the view that truth consists in a proposition, which is a fixed and final result, or again which is directly known. To questirms hke, " When was Ceesar born? ", " How many feet made a furlong? ", etc., 38 Phenomenology of Mind a straight answer ought to be given; just as it is ab- solutely true that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides of a right-angled triangle. But the nature of a so- called truth of that sort is different from the nature of philosophical truth.
As regards truth in matters of historical fact — to deal briefly with this subject — so far as we consider the purely historical element, it will be readily granted that they have to do with the sphere of particular existence, with a content in its contingent and arbitrary aspects, features that have no necessity. But even bare truths of the kind, say, like those mentioned, are impossible without the activity of self-consciousness. To get to know any one of them, there has to be a good deal of comparison, books must be consulted, or in some way or other inquiry has to be made. Even in a case of direct perception, only when we know it along with the reasons behind it, is it held to be something of real value; although it is merely the naked fact itself that we are, properly speaking, supposed to be concerned about. — ' As to mathematical truths, we should be still less inclined to consider anyone a geometer who had got Euchd's theorems by heart (auswendig) without know- ing the proofs, without, if we may say so by way of contrast, getting them into his head {inwendig). Simi- larly, if anyone came to know by measuring many right-angled triangles that their sides are related in the way everybody knows, v/e should regard knowledge so obtained as unsatisfactory. All the same, while proof is essential in the case of mathematical knowledge, it still does not have the.significance and nature of Preface 39 being a moment in the result itself; the proof is over when we get the result, and has disappeared. Qua result the theorem is, no doubt, one that is seen to be true. But this eventuality has nothing to do with its content, but only with its relation to the knowing subject. The process of mathematical proof does not belong to the object; it is a function that takes place outside the matter in hand. Thus, the nature of a right-angled triangle does not break itself up into factors in the manner set forth in the mathematical construction which is required to prove the proposition expressing the relation of its parts. The entire process of producing the result is an affair of knowledge which takes its own way of going about it. In philosophical knowledge, too, the way existence, qua existence, comes about (Werden) is different from that whereby the essence or inner nature of the fact comes into being. But philosophical knowledge, for one thing, contains both, while mathematical knowledge sets forth merely the way an existence comes about, i.e. the way the nature of the fact gets to be in the sphere of know- ledge as such. For another thing, too, philosophical knowledge unites both these particular movements. The inward rising into being, the process of substance, is an unbroken transition into outwardness, into existence or being for another; and conversely, the coming of existence into being is withdrawal into the inner essence. The movement is the twofold process in which the whole comes to be, and is such that each at the same time posits the other, and each on that account has in it both as its two aspects. Together they make the whole, through their resolving each other, and making themselves into moments of the whole.
40 Phenomenology of Mind In mathematical knowledge the insight required is an external function so far as the subject-matter dealt with is concerned. It follows that the actual fact is thereby altered. The means taken, construction and proof, contain, no doubt, true propositions; but all the same we are bound to say that the content is false. The triangle in the above example is taken to pieces, and its parts made into other figures to which the construction gives rise in the triangle. It is only at the end that we find again reinstated the triangle we are really concerned with; it was lost sight of in the course of the construction, and was present merely in fragments, that belonged to other wholes. Thus we find negativity of content coming in here too, a nega- tivity which would have to be called falsity, just as much as in the case of the movement of the notion where thoughts that are taken to be fixed pass away and disappear.